


If At First

by eyres



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 04:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyres/pseuds/eyres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a strange planet, Leonard McCoy must suffer through an alien version of the Kobayashi Maru scenario. How many times will Jim die in his arms before he accepts the inevitable?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Try Again

**Author's Note:**

> Just like in the real Kobayashi Maru, deaths aren't permanent.

“ _Try again.”_

Leonard opens his eyes, arms empty, and Jim is already three steps ahead, midday sun turning his hair gold. It reminds him of San Francisco and summer days in the Academy and the simple world of before.

“C’mon! we can’t miss the ferry, Bones!” Jim pauses, reaches back, fingers wrapping around Leonard’s wrist like he’s a toddler eager to show his parent the world. His face is unlined – not yet a captain. “Keep up, old man.”

Jim is laughing as he takes two steps into the street and one of the few ground based trolleys left in the city plows right into him. His body is loose limbed like a broken puppet tossed into the air. There’s a thump like buildings falling where his body lands ten feet away.

For a breath, Leonard considers just sitting down where he is and waiting for it to be over. It would be quick. He can already see that there is nothing to be done. Not even the prayer of a chance he has sometimes when it’s a disease or a poison. But he can’t ever ever ever leave any Jim to die alone.

He gets to Jim’s side in four steps. There’s blood spread out like a wing from where Jim’s leg is torn away at the knee and when Leonard slides his hand underneath his head, he feels wet mushiness that makes his insides scream _not good not good._

“Jim,” he murmurs. He skates his thumb down the side of Jim’s cheek, mopping up the blood trickling from a split over his eye. “Hey, it’s okay.”

Someone is calling an ambulance and he can hear a child crying. But it’s all distant and abstract – a silent movie playing behind him as the world in front of him moves in loud, fast reds and blues.

Blue eyes crack open a sliver, pain glazed and fading. “Buh-Bones.”

“Shh, darlin’, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m right here with you.” He reaches into the bag that’s always with him, finds the morphine hypo by touch alone and lifts it to Jim’s neck even as the younger man chokes and strains to keep his eyes open. “Hush.” Even a few deaths ago, his fingers had shaken so hard during these times – these ones when there was never any chance at all and the only thing he could do was keep Jim comfortable and calm, tell him he was loved and he mattered before he slipped away as peacefully as Leonard could make it.

The hypo goes in with a hiss and Jim’s face relaxes. His hand, which had been fisted around Leonard’s sleeve, loosens and slips to barely hang on to his fingers.

“Suh-sorry,” he splutters, blood staining his teeth red. His breaths are getting fainter, morphine dulling the pain and slowing him down so he’ll slip under easy, like falling into bed after a long day in the sun. It’s only been a few seconds since he got hit – and it will only be a few seconds more.

Blood and blond mix together when Leonard brushes the hair from his face, cupping the familiar cheek and treasuring the pulse that will be throbbing there for just a few seconds more. “It’s okay, Jim. It’s okay. You can rest now.”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Jim slurs, manages to hook his fingers around Leonard’s thumb. His eyes are drifting but he struggles to focus onto Leonard one last time. A smile twitches the corner of one lip before his fingers relax. His eyes close then and Leonard knows it’s done.

He’s holding a limp, empty body, blood staining the ground and his clothes and his face is stinging like he’s supposed to cry but nothing has come out for days. He can’t remember the last time he cried. At least this one was quick, he thinks.

The air around him pinwheels and the familiar numbness creeps up his fingers. When he can no longer feel the weight of Jim in his arms and the world is a painting melting into fire, the voice booms out of the empty blur:

_“Try again.”_

* * *

When Jim came to him, face set like a determined bulldog puppy, and said he was going to try the Kobayashi Maru for the second time, Leonard had said he was crazy, loudly and continuously.

“It’s meant to be no-win, Jim. Why are you throwing yourself against an immovable wall. You know even fucking lab rats are smarter than you – they stop doing something that causes them pain.”

Jim had let him rant and then asked him to be his helmsman. “I have to do it, Bones. I have to figure it out.”

Leonard had never understood Jim’s drive. Not the second time, not the third time.

Now, he thinks, when he opens his eyes and he’s laying on a feather bed, white curtains blowing above him, he understands why you would throw yourself at an immovable object. Why you would play the game even when you know the deck has always been stacked against you. Why you hold on and fight just a little longer even when you know the outcome is fixed before you began.

When you have something to lose.

Jim is asleep next to him, one hand tucked under his face and the other flung toward Leonard, finger tips brushing his ribs. He’s breathing evenly – but this isn’t Leonard’s first rodeo.

He rolls to his side and grabs the always present medical bag, finding the tricorder.

Ten or fourteen times ago, he’d woken up in some place like Georgia with Jim spooned behind him. They’d been young, back on leave from the Academy if the course schedule tucked under Jim’s bag had been an indication, and Jim had been glowing and eager, making Leonard pancakes and dancing around the kitchen. They spent the entire day in bed. And in the evening, despite Leonard’s protests, they’d gone for a ride on Jim’s motorcycle.

Nothing had happened.

They’d laid on a look-out point and counted the stars and eaten sandwiches. Jim hadn’t choked or crashed off the motorcycle or fallen off the cliff or tripped on his own goddamn feet and sent a rock into his brain. There had been no crazed mugger, no falling comet, no wrong place wrong time. It had been serene.

As they had gone to bed that night, Leonard had let himself think that it was over. That this was the end. He’d finally passed the fucking test and now he was with Jim in an idyllic world until the cycle was complete.

The next morning, Jim had started coughing up blood. By noon, he couldn’t get out of bed, pale as milk and fever bright. Some goddamn parasite from some planet that Leonard didn’t even recognize was sitting in his gut and there was nothing to be done. The emergency room he took Jim to said they’d never seen anything like it, said if they’d caught it a few hours before that maybe… but now just, “keep him comfortable, here’s morphine, we’re so sorry.”

It took Jim three days to die. He’d withered in agony, shakes and sweats and seizures as his body turned into a weapon to kill him. He can still remember Jim, unable to even lift his head and agony twisting his mouth into a rictus, gripping his hands and trying to make Leonard promise that he’d be all right after he died, to go back to the Academy and take a job on some space station. To be safe and happy. Leonard had kissed his eyelids, held him in his arms, and promised Jim anything to give him some sort of peace. He had finally succumbed to the parasite, securely cradled against Leonard’s chest. Jim had gasped and shook, but his eyes had never left Leonard’s until they glazed in death. Jim never died alone.

After that, Leonard never took anything for granted. Everything was a test. Every moment. He wasn’t sure how he would ever pass. If he even could pass. But he couldn’t stop trying.

The tricorder hums and Leonard pokes as it slowly calculates. When the results scroll down, he sucks in a breath. He wants to slam the device into a wall because it’s clearly not working right, except that he knows it is.

Now that he’s more awake, he notices the room. The oxygen tanks and mask sitting next to Jim’s side of the bed, the neatly lined hypos on his side of the bed, the thinness of Jim’s wrists, the hoverchair in the corner of the room.

Brain tumor. They must’ve caught it too late for intervention. Now it’s huge, pressing against his brain stem. From the size of it, Jim has only days, if not hours, before he’ll slip into a coma and never wake up.

Even though he knows the end to this story (he’s lived it dozens and dozens of times before now), he panics and lunges across the space between them, gripping Jim’s face between his hands because _what if he is already gone what if he has arrived to only watch him slip away without ever opening his eyes_. The soft glow of morning hid the gauntness of his cheeks; but, now that Bones is close, he can see how the skin beneath his eyes is so dark and thin, how his lips are white and chapped, how pain lines have settled across his forehead.

He doesn’t know what he wants. If Jim doesn’t wake up, that means Leonard can lay here in quiet while he slips away – maybe use the time to figure out a way to beat this and get back to some place where Jim isn’t dying in his arms.

He’s not even sure what reality is. What if Jim is just as dead back there and reliving his death over and over is all Leonard has left of him. He shakes the thought away. All Leonard needs right now is to see Jim’s eyes, to live in these seconds where he’s still warm and breathing.

“Darlin’,” he murmurs, so close his lips brush Jim’s. “Open your eyes. Wake up for me.”

Jim’s eyes flutter, murky blue peeking out and settling on Leonard. “Bones,” he says. “Not dead yet, huh?” He manages a grin, the thinness of his face making it stretch his cheeks in an unfamiliar way. Just as quick, he frowns. “Hey, no tears. We said no more tears.”

Leonard wonders how long they’ve known about the tumor. If it’s been weeks or months or days and Jim has made his peace and maybe Leonard has made his peace too. Maybe Jim is ready to slip away this time. Then again, Jim has been dying for days weeks months now and it still hurts just as badly every time. Maybe there are some things that he can never be at peace with.

A shaky hand wipes his face, brushes down his cheeks, rests on his lips. “You’re beautiful,” Jim murmurs. And then, more quietly like the whisper when a dream is almost over, “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Leonard leans close and kisses his cheeks, his chin, his mouth. “I love you,” he says, because he didn’t say it when Jim lay dying after the bus.

Jim smiles brilliantly, like the sun when all the rain has gone. “Let’s stay in bed today. I’m… I’m kind of tired.” His eyes are not quite focusing anymore, skating around Leonard’s face.

“Is your vision okay?” Leonard asks, resting his thumb underneath the left one.

Jim shrugs. “Been going in and out still. I can see you out of the left one. Even if you do look a little like the watercolor Joanna made me last time we were on earth.” He leans closer. “I know what it means, Bones. Let’s just… just lay here, okay? Tell me about your grandma’s chicken again. How we’ll eat it next time we go to Georgia.”

Leonard’s mouth is dry like dust. “Can I get you water or morphine or…”

Jim shifts so his head is tucked under Leonard’s chin. “Just you, Bones. Need a bedtime story to help me sleep. Again. All I do is sleep.” His voice goes shaky for just a second. “I think this is the last time though.”

Through the thin tshirt, Leonard can feel all the knobs of Jim’s spine, his chest falling and rising, the fine trembles as his control deteriorates. He tightens his arms, like holding Jim will keep him here.

“Okay, darlin’, let me tell you a story….”

Jim stops breathing two hours later. Leonard doesn’t move, pushes his lips against Jim’s cold forehead and breathes in. “I’ll save you,” he says against the last flutters of Jim’s pulse. “I will save you.”

_“Try again.”_


	2. And Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leonard takes another approach.

Leonard opens his eyes to explosions, shuddering waves of sound and dirt that make his ears ring and his stomach lurch.

There’s a solid wall at his back, vibrating with the concussion of noise. When he inhales, the air stinks of blood and sulfur. Before him, a city is reduced to rubble and fires.

“Bones!” Jim pops up in his line of vision, eyes fever bright through the grime on his face. “C’mon, we’re falling back. They breached the first wall.” His hand is locked around Leonard’s wrist, a large phaser cradled in his other.

Leonard goes obediently. The med kit is in his hands and he squeezes the familiar weight tightly. This is a war zone. Anything could happen.

Just ahead of him, Jim is talking into his comm, voice quick sharp over the constant whine of artillery. His gold shirt is torn across the shoulder, showing bruised skin beneath.

Is he hiding broken ribs? One false move could puncture a lung and Jim would be out of oxygen before Leonard could request a beam out. His hands twitch forward to check, but they’re moving forward too fast.

Above, two twin suns glow orange through layers of smoke. The air is blowing hot across the rusty brown rubble. Leonard can see an ocean in the distance, dark blue to almost gray, backing up to the blackening sky.

Jim leads them deeper into the city, keeping them pressed near the safety of what’s left of the stone wall on their right. His face is tight. He’s just about the age he had been when Leonard had been thrown into this nightmare. Even with explosions and a strange planet and ash burning his lungs, something in Jim's alive face settles Leonard. Jim has always had that effect on him.

The next explosion is closer and Leonard lurches forward with the pressure, into Jim. The younger man is solid, warm and alive, and keeps them both upright even as bit of debris rain down.

"You okay?" He shouts, hot breath in Leonard's ear. "Bones!" He says, louder when Leonard doesn't answer, his hands gripping tight around his shoulders.

“’m okay,” Leonard gasps back. The explosion snapped his teeth together and there’s salty copper on his tongue. He takes the opportunity of being pressed close to Jim to run his hands down his ribs. He doesn’t feel the anything broken and it makes him breathe a little easier.

Jim makes sure he’s steady before moving away and Leonard instantly feels colder.

They’ve moved deeper into the rubble – closer to the percussion of the blasts. Ahead, there's one squat brown building within sprinting distance, down what used to be a city street but is now rubble and open air.

Jim is tucking the phaser into his pants, looking across at the building as if weighing the distance.

_Hell, no._

"Are you crazy?" Leonard can’t help but say. Jim's arm is tense under his hand. "We can't run across that. We'll be better targets than ducks in a kiddie pool." He can see it now.

A phaser from above and Jim is dropping into Leonard's arms, bleeding in great gushes until nothing is left. An explosion from in front and Jim is speared through with twisted metal, broken in too many pieces to ever mend.

Jim bats at him, impatient but somehow tender in the familiar way their fingers brush together. "We don't have a choice, Bones. This wall is going to be giving way and we'll be sitting ducks here too." His thumb, rough with callouses and grime, snags Leonard's pinky, pressing lightly. "It'll be okay, Bones. I'll get you there safe."

_It's never me I'm worried about. You die in my arms again and again and I can't stop it and you stand there smiling and thinking I'm worried about me when all I can think of is keeping you alive for seconds, minutes, hours, days longer._

Something must show in his eyes because Jim stops, smile falling away and reaching out so he can touch Leonard's cheekbone.

"Hey." He's low and sweet like mornings with pancakes and evenings with no shoes on and old movies on holo.

_I miss you._

"Hey," Jim says again. His eyes are steady and bright and so blue it hurts Leonard's chest. He leans close, pushes closed-mouth a kiss to Leonard's lips. It's easy and familiar and so cherished.

"We'll be back on the Enterprise soon. And we'll get dinner in the room and we can..." He wiggles his eyebrows like the child he is, equal parts dirty and absurd.

Leonard smiles because that's all he wants. A quiet night. A night where he's not worried about Jim choking or his allergies or a wall paneling collapsing or an unfortunate trip over a misplaced boot.

"Ready?" Jim steps away and they're running seconds later.

The ground is churned up with metal and rock. It's the worst obstacle course ever created. Leonard is only two steps behind Jim, matching his strides across the uneven remnants of buildings and benches.

It’s not far – only a few seconds, but time stretches as Leonard watches Jim dodge and weave, golden hair catching the sparse sunlight like a target.

The door is long gone and Jim ducks inside, phaser held in front of him. Leonard stops just inside, patting at the med kit to confirm it’s still intact while Jim sweeps the corners.

“All clear,” Jim says, and bends forward to put his hands on his knees.

One moment they're catching their breath and Jim is huffing little laughs of relief, and then Leonard is flying through the air, ears ringing from the explosion he felt before he heard.

He hits hard. Something crunches within him and there's pain and numbness and he blacks out for a second. When he forces his eyes open again, the world is half red, tilted and upside down. He rolls over and brushes the blood from his eyes.

The squat little brown building is gone – the dark smoky sky is above Leonard again and he can see the ocean again, pressed against the horizon. Pieces of wall are on his legs so he shoves them away. When he drops his hands to his side, he feels something cold and slick stabbed through near his ribs. Blood is sluggishly pumping around the sides – but it doesn’t matter.

Jim is a few yards ahead, curled on his side so Leonard can't see his face.

Leonard doesn't realize his leg is broken until he tries to get up and the pain sends him toppling back down, wet agony driving through his ribs with a force that leaves him breathless.

"Jim," he says. There's no response but Leonard hasn't been swept away yet so he's still alive... There's still a chance...

Besides, Jim never dies alone.

So he crawls - drags his leg behind him and ignores the wetness soaking his shirt on his shoulder and the pain in lungs. Every breath he manages gurgles; he can taste copper at the back of his tongue.

Something deep inside is wrong, bleeding out into his abdominal cavity, but Leonard can't bring himself to care. Can he even die in this goddamn loop? Maybe that'll end it. Maybe he'll get some peace at long last if he can die with Jim instead of watching him go.

He makes it to Jim, doesn't look at the smear of blood he's dragged behind him.

Jim is shuddering, muscles jerking beneath Leonard's palms when he rolls him over, like he's trying to keep shouts in. Violently blue eyes meet Leonard's, reddened with dust and pain. Jim grimaces and one hand falls away from his bloody stomach to paw at Leonard's elbow.

A metal rod had torn through him, ripped halfway through his torso. Leonard looks away so he doesn’t have to see Jim’s insides. There have been dozens of injuries that have taken Jim from him now, but the sick feeling in his gut never goes away when he realizes Jim will die again.

Leonard can’t meet Jim’s eyes yet. He focuses on his neck instead, the smattering of tiny barely there freckles that go up the side of jaw and the two-day old scruff – the tiny laugh lines just around the edges of his mouth that remind Leonard that his captain is so young yet so old.

“Bones,” Jim whimpers and Leonard snaps into focus.

“I’m here, Jim. I’m right here.” He scoots, swings his broken leg around, so he can get Jim’s shoulders and head comfortably into his lap. It’s getting harder to breathe but Leonard can’t bring himself to care. He pets the younger man’s forehead and forces a smile. Jim is always more relaxed when he smiles. When Jim’s hand reaches out, he pulls it close and fits their palms together.

Jim licks his lips. “Okay?” His voice is thick and his eyes keep drifting to the side like he can't keep them focused. "You," his hand spasms in Leonard's like it's trying to take flight, "kay?"

Leonard isn't. There's a heavy pressure in his chest, squeezing his lungs tight, and the deep pain inside says he doesn't have long. His leg, the broken one, is bleeding. It didn't hit an artery (he'd be dead) but he's losing blood externally and internally and he doesn't have much time.

This is the part where he lies to Jim – where he tells him anything he needs to hear so he can be at peace. It never matters anyway – because Jim will just die again soon enough and Leonard will make a different set of promises.

He stares down at Jim - at those half focused eyes and the ashy skin and the blood that's showing at the corner of his mouth. In his own side, the piece of shrapnel shifts and he feels another gush of warm blood soak into his shirt.

If he pulls it out, maybe he’d bleed out in just a few minutes.

Leonard feels like those birds in summer in Georgia, drunk and crazy and flying into hovercrafts as they go whizzing by.

Maybe if he can die before Jim... Maybe just maybe.

“Jim. Jim.” He pats his face, pushes his thumb into the space between his eye and his hairline. “Jim. I need you to stay awake for me. Okay? I need you to hold on just a little bit longer, okay? Can you do that?”

He casts around wildly for the med kit. There are things he can do – not to save Jim, but stabilize him for a few minutes… just long enough…

But the med kit is gone – lost in the explosion. Goddamn it

“Tryin’,” Jim murmurs. His blue eyes are just bright slits in his face. “Dunno if it’s working.” He huffs like he’s laughing but it ends in a whine of pain, stiffening against Leonard. “Hurts.”

“I know, darlin’. Just a little bit longer.” Leonard breathes in and lets go of Jim’s hand so he can grab the slick edges of the shrapnel just under his ribs. His fingers slide, trying to get a grip, and he curses. Finally, he throws finesse to the wind and just digs in and jerks.

It hurts.

It hurts like dragging a burn through hot gravel. He manages to muffle half his shout behind clenched teeth, the breath stolen from his already struggling lungs in the pain of it all.

“Bones!” Jim is trembling in his lap, unable to get up but still trying. He’s dusty pale and desperate and so alive that it makes the pain somehow a little less.

“I’m okay,” Leonard says. And it’s true. He’s okay now. Warmth is washing from the gaping wound in his side. He’s instantly dizzy and it makes a smile come to his face.

It’s not that he wants to die – he’s been fighting against death for what feels like forever. 

He’s not hoping for death – he’s hoping to force the fucking hand of this fucking puppet master and make this torture end. He’s hoping to open his eyes and Jim is hale and smiling and not dying.

His fingers are numb now and he’s drooping so he shifts until he’s laying beside Jim, pulling his head against his shoulder.

Jim is waning fast – his lips are tinged blue but they’re still a thin line. “Bones. Wha… did you do?” His hand finds the wound, presses once. “You’re bleeding.”

Now it’s Leonard’s turn to laugh a little. “So are you.” He sighs. The tiredness in his body is heavy, overpowering, pushing him into the ground like a weight. “’m tired of watching you die,” he mumbles, brushing a kiss over Jim’s face. “Lemme do this just once. Might work.”

Jim struggles a bit more, pressing his hand against the blood as if he can keep him here. Leonard just strokes his hair and thinks of the times before – of all the times he saved Jim.

“I’ll save you,” he finally says when Jim is crying against his shoulder, defeated and weak and fading. “Not this time. But I will.” He makes the promise as his vision dims and the only thing he can feel is Jim’s slumping weight. “It’ll be okay.”


	3. And Again

When Leonard opens his eyes, he’s in the med bay of the Enterprise. There’s filtered air and antiseptic and the bleachy cleaning solution.

“Bones!” Jim leans across him, exactly the Jim he remembers. He’s a little pale and a little thin, the gold command tunic hangs just a bit more than he remembers. But Jim is smiling and his hands are warm and strong. “You’re awake!”

Leonard licks his lips, his mouth dry like dust. “Wha… what…”

Jim frowns, squeezing his fingers. “The Sena priest put you in some sort of trance. He said he was healing you. When you didn’t wake up, we beamed you back. That was a few hours ago. It’s okay now, though. You’re awake!”

“I’m awake,” Leonard confirms, relaxing back. He exhales for the first time in what feels like ever, letting the weight lift off his shoulders. “I’m awake.”

“Let me get Geoffrey.” Jim smiles and it’s like sunrise after the longest night of nightmares, glowing. “I have to go back down and finish negotiations. But you rest – we’ll have dinner tonight.”

Leonard nods and settles back on the bio bed. The terror of the dream, trance, whatever is fading in the comfort of familiar surroundings and a familiar Jim. He sighs and looks around the tiny cubicle his bed is in.

On the chair, a few steps away, sits his med kit.

Leonard gapes. Why would’ve someone left it there? He’d been unconscious. They wouldn’t have left it next to him. It should be in his office, locked up.

A sick feeling settles in his gut and he struggles upright, reaching for the call button. “Jim!”

His bare feet are just touching the floor when he hears a clatter and shouts from the main room. He staggers out into the open. Adrenaline is flooding him and he can hear his heart beat thundering along in his ears.

“What happened?”

Two nurses and Geoffrey are huddled over a fourth figure in a gold command tunic, crumpled on the floor. Jim’s gasping, clawing at his neck, lips turning blue as his feet press wildly at the floor trying to get some leverage.

He drops to his knees next to him, already reaching out. “Allergy?” he asks, fighting for calm because allergies he can fix – he’s fixed it hundreds of times and he can do it again. This is easy.

Geoffrey is shaking his head, trying to keep Jim’s head tilted back as he checks for obstructions. “I didn’t see him eat anything. There wasn’t…”

“Doctor!” one of the nurses is staring down at the tricorder in her hands, pushing it at Geoffrey.

Before Leonard’s eyes, the other doctor’s face falls as he reads the results. “Poison,” he says, softly. “The priest gave him something to drink before we beamed back with you… but that was hours ago…”

Leonard grabs the tricorder.

It’s a toxin he hasn’t seen before – looks like something similar to arsenic.

Jim begins to seize, head thumping loudly against the floor.

“Hold him!”

Blood is frothing from his mouth, joining twin streams from his nose, his ears, his eyes. His eyes roll around aimlessly and his mouth gapes wide before he’s vomiting, slick ribbons of blood and bile and black stuff that Leonard doesn’t even want to take a guess at. There’s blood under his hips too – he’s bleeding out from everywhere.

Geoffrey is yelling orders that Leonard can’t even hear because this cannot be happening again. They’re trying to establish an airway, trying hypos, shouting about blood types and all Leonard can do is try to mop up the blood as quickly as it comes out.

The seizure stops and Jim lets out a high thin whine that doesn’t even sound human – a dying animal maybe. He gags and chokes and whines again. “Hurts,” he finally get out. “Oh god, Bones, it hurts.” His eyes are a strange red, white and blue – crying tears of blood as his hands go up to face, scratching at his cheeks. “Christ. God.”

“Morphine,” Leonard says over his head to one of the nurses.

“We did.”

Jim jerks. “Can’t see. It hurts. Bones…” He gasps and his body seizes up like it’s about to go into another fit… but instead, Jim just, horribly, loosens. There’s no more breaths, no more sounds, no more twitches – just empty silence and his eyes, rimmed in blood, staring straight out.

“No pulse - get the crash cart!” M’Benga is tearing Jim’s shirt, pushing Leonard away to get Jim flat.

Leonard lets himself fall back and stares, watches as they try to bring him back – once, twice, three times.

Finally Geoffrey moves back, sits on his heels and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Leonard,” he offers, tiredly. “Time of death 19:53.”

Except there’s no booming voice, no swirling colors, no creeping numbness and “try again.”

“You’re wrong.” The words are dragged over Leonard’s throat, painful and raw and so desperate. “You’re wrong. Try again. He isn’t dead.”

“Leonard…”

One of the nurses is reaching out, closing Jim’s eyes.

“But.” He lunges forward, pressing his fingers into Jim’s neck. There’s just emptiness, skin already losing its warmth. His face is still, covered in blood and slack like it had been after Khan.

Why hasn’t Leonard already left? Isn’t it time to try again? That’s the game, right? He’s still in the game?

He jumps to his feet and charges back to the room, finds the med kit still sitting innocuously on the chair. It’s fully stocked, like it always is. He has to be still in the game.

Leonard slides to the floor, clutching the med kit to his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let myself die. I’m sorry. Please let me try again. I’ll do anything. I just want to try again.”

“Leonard?” Geoffrey is standing in the doorway, hands held in front of him like Leonard’s a wild animal to placate. “Leonard, I know this is hard. Can I get you anything? Some water? You should try to rest…”

“I just want to try again!” Leonard closes his eyes, letting his head thump back against the wall. “Goddamnit, you bastard. I’ll play. I’ll play. Just let me try again. You can’t leave me here!”

There’s silence and Leonard can hear Geoffrey leaving, footsteps squeaking just a little across the white tiles.

It’s very cold, seeping into Leonard’s skin. He shivers, holding the med kit like a talisman. What if this is it? What if this was the punishment for trying to beat the system? To come back to reality and lose Jim to pain and blood, just like in the loops – but this time, no take-backs, no second chances: just, cold nothing because Jim was dead and Leonard had failed for the final time. It’s enough to make him feel sick and he groans again.

“I promise,” he whispers into his hands. “I won’t do it again. Just let me try to save him again. Give me another chance. I’ll figure it out. I’ll do better. Please.” He holds his breath.

He feels the numbness in his fingers, than his arms, then he sees a swirl of color from behind his eyes. The cold of the med bay fades.

When the voice echoes, Leonard lets himself fall gratefully, tears dying in his eyes.

_“Try again.”_

* * *

Leonard opens his eyes and Jim is smiling.

Leonard opens his eyes and Jim is laughing.

Leonard opens his eyes and Jim is saying his name.

He opens his eyes on earth, in space, on spaceships, in cities. He sees trees and rivers and oceans and cliffs and stars. He’s in shuttles, in dorm rooms, in med bays and cabin rooms, on the bridge. He’s in Jim’s arms.

They’re young. They’re old. They’re sick. They’re healthy. They’re running. They’re fucking.

Jim dies quietly, loudly, quickly, slowly. He dies reaching for Leonard, falling away from him, curling against him, saying his name, gasping for air. But he dies all the same.

Sometimes he’s in pain, sometimes he’s at peace. Sometimes he cries and fights, sometimes he slips away like he’s just going to sleep.

No matter where he is, no matter how Jim dies, the heaviness in Leonard’s chest never lifts.

And so he tries again.

He opens his eyes.

* * *

In his med kit, there is the following:

1 universal hypospray

2 narcotic hyposprays

3 cartridges of morphine

2 cartridges of generic antibiotics

4 cartridges of epinephrine

6 cartridges of tri-ox

1 tricorder

1 dermal regenerator with a half charge

1 osteogenerator with a full charge

1 roll of gauze

2 tubes of sealant

3 tubes of antiseptic

Jim dies in shuttle crashes and fist fights. He’s poisoned and stabbed and dropped on his head. He drowns and suffocates and chokes and bleeds out.

But the med kit never changes.

It becomes like a meditation. If Leonard doesn’t open his eyes to Jim dying, he makes time to go through the kit, lay everything out, count the supplies. No matter what he uses in one cycle, it’s replenished the next.

In one cycle, he’s back in his medbay, so he grabs a cardiac stimulator and a bag of Jim’s blood type and throws those in the med kit. The next cycle, they’re gone.

He tries sliding hypos into his own pockets. If they’re from the medkit, they’re back in the bag. If they’re from somewhere else, they’re gone as if they had never been there.

Mostly, he’s in his science blues. Now and then, it’s his cadet uniform or his casual blacks. Once, when Jim is assassinated at a podium, he’s in his dress grays.

He tries telling Jim once. Jim dies from a heart attack before he’s finished the sentence.

Once, when Jim lies in a coma and slips in ways in blips and drips, Leonard thinks back to Khan – back to the first time Jim died. He saved him then, brought him back. He won. He beat death.

Leonard steeples his fingers, takes Jim’s hand in his. He listens to Jim’s heart rate as it slows and thinks about what he did then – how he beat the game the first time. Super blood. A cheat.

He thinks about Jim cheating the Kobayashi Maru with code. He thinks about how Jim cheated gravity by throwing himself into the warp core. He thinks about how he cheated death with blood.

“There has to be a cheat,” he tells Jim, just before his heart stops beating. “I just have to find it.”

It’s somewhere around the 36th cycle when Leonard begins to see fraying edges.

They’re in Enterprise, but something’s not right. The walls flicker to almost translucent, lights dimming and brightening, darkness swimming in the corners of his eyes.

The medbay looks off - like the layout shrunk somehow – paler and grayer like the color saturation on a holo gone bad.

He tries pushing it, walks to parts of the ship he’s never been to before. The corridors seem to be laid out correctly, but when he rounds a corner that should lead him to the bowels of engineering, he finds himself back in the medbay and Jim’s dying on a gurney from an accident in the science labs.

In the beginning, Leonard had been in massive cities and forests and strange planets – wide worlds with a thousand different things. Now, he’s on the Enterprise, most frequently. Sometimes it’ll be their old dorm room, his house in Georgia, a classroom from their first year, Starfleet HQ or the cottage they got in Risa during the last shore leave.

It’s weakening.

So Leonard pushes the boundaries. If he’s in their dorm room, he’ll urge Jim to go out, make them walk to parts of the city they rarely frequent. He watches the buildings become flat, people become faceless, sounds of a city fading to just the rumble of far off white noise.

A fog starts to rise, even though the day had been clear, gray blankness obscuring the ground and the sky and Leonard feels like if he just walked a few more steps, he’d reach the end of the world.

Jim chokes to death on nothing but air. When it’s clear nothing he does is working to save him, Leonard holds Jim, comforts him, pets his forehead until Jim stops jerking. He holds his limp body, dry eyed, staring ahead down the empty, fading road.

Just before the world swirls into pieces, the fog blows away and Leonard could swear he sees a glass door standing in nothing.

_“Try again.”_

* * *

Jim is dying from a phaser shot through his chest. They’re on the floor of Starfleet HQ, pressed near the wall while a mad gunman screams about saving the Earth from aliens.

Red is soaking through the shirt Leonard pressed against the wound and Jim has gone white. His fingers tangle in Leonard’s sleeve, tugging as Leonard tries to get the bleeding under control.

This isn’t a bad one. He’s seen worse. There’s a chance.

He tells himself this every time.

“Bones,” Jim says breathily. “Bones.”

Leonard pauses and cups his face. “Yes, darlin’, I’m right here. Just stay with me.”

“Bones…” Jim’s eyes drift to the side, like he’s seeing something else. “You have to,” he licks his lips, “you have to escape.”

“Darlin’, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“Nuh-no. Not now. Before. You have to leave me. Next time.”

Leonard freezes. “What?”

Jim blinks, blood bubbling over his lips. “You have to leave me. Go out the door. There’s always a door. Let me go. Don’t try.” He grabs his hand with shaky fingers, squeezes hard. “There’s always a back exit. You have to find it.”

“I promise,” Leonard says automatically.

“Good, good.” Jim relaxes, settles against him. “I miss you,” he murmurs.

A sob breaks passed. “I miss you too.” Leonard finds the morphine and gently deposits it into Jim’s neck. “Just rest now, darlin’. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Jim sighs, tucking his head against Leonard as the morphine overdose floods him. “Doesn’t hurt,” he says, only as loud a breath. “thought it would…”

His hand falls away and he’s quiet against Leonard, face unlined and serene like a child’s. Leonard presses a kiss to his forehead, mind spinning even as he registers yet another Jim dying against him.

_“Try again.”_

* * *

He opens his eyes in the Enterprise, in his own office with Jim sitting in front of him, reviewing the daily reports. The med kit is in his lap.

He opens his eyes – and he knows what he has to do. It’s fitting he’s here – in the ship that is his home. He knows exactly what will await him now.

Brushing passed Jim’s startled exclamation, he opens the door and takes off down the hallway. He can hear Jim following him, calling his name.

Through the science labs, down the long hallway until he’s coming out in the wide belly of the ship, turbines and tubes and generators humming around him.

“Bones, what are you doing?”

Leonard risks a glance behind him. “Be careful, Jim.”

“Me? I’m not the one suddenly traipsing around engineering. What the hell, Bones?”

“Just trust me.”

Jim goes quiet but he keeps following.

By the time he gets to the warp core, the crewmembers are all faceless around him, just fleshy smears where their faces used to be. The panels are all just blurs of big buttons, labels and functions indiscernible. The same gray fog is rising out of the gray floor and when Leonard turns around, he can’t even see back the way they came.

Jim is near his shoulder but Leonard can’t look at him. “What are we doing here, Bones?”

The warp core door is the only thing visible now, sharply defined even as the rest of the world is nothing but a smear of grays. It looks heavy and solid and like every single one of Leonard’s nightmares from before.

“I’m sorry, Jim,” he says, quietly. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to save you.”

He turns, finally.

Jim is pale and clammy, his eyes bloodshot. He’s wavering, legs weakening as radiation burns start showing up on his hands and neck. “You did save me,” he says, even as he falls against Leonard. “You always save me.”

Leonard settles him against the gray wall, soothes a hand down the side of his head. “I’ve been going about this the wrong way,” he explains, even though he knows Jim won’t understand. “I thought this was all about saving you. Goddamn fool, I am.”

He presses a quick kiss to Jim’s forehead, feels the heat as the radiation burns him from the inside out. “I love you. If this doesn’t work or you’re gone or they take you away, I love you.”

“Don’t leave me,” Jim gasps, hands tangling in Leonard’s uniform. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t be afraid.” Leonard settles him back, lays his hands in his lap. “We’ll be together soon, darlin’. One way or another. I promise.”

He steps back and walks toward the door. It hurts. The puppet master of this nightmare knows exactly what to do to make it hurt – knows what to do to make him not want to go through that door.

He can hear Jim behind him. The gentle rumble of white noise is getting louder and the fog is making it harder to breathe. Everything smells musky and damp, like the old attic in Grandma’s house.

The door is hot under his fingertips, like there’s fire on the other side. He tries the handle and it gives easily, swinging away to reveal the decontamination chamber. Leonard hasn’t been here since before Jim died here.

That death, the first death, seems so long ago. Leonard had won that time.

He’s never been in here before but it’s not hard to spot the access tunnel. The air is syrupy inside the tunnel, he can feel the burn all the way through his blood as he sucks in the radiation.

In all the time since Jim died here, Leonard’s never tried to imagine this part. When it wasn’t for sure that Jim would wake up, he had made Spock tell him about those last moments by the door. When he first saw Jim’s still face, he’d tried to figure out what had gone on in his head when he’d opened the door.

But this part? The long crawl toward the top when the decision has already been made and death is minutes away and the poison is seeping, burning into his lungs – this part, he’s never imagined.

The air getting heavier, barely any oxygen, and Leonard has to stop and gasp a couple times before he keeps going.

Everything is burning around him now – metal heating red. Jim is back there, dying. Jim is ahead, living. Leonard makes himself keep crawling.

He never understood the Kobayashi Maru. He never understood how Jim could go into the warp core. He’s admired Jim, envied Jim, shaken his head at Jim. He thinks of all the times he has tried so hard to save Jim, only for it to end in nothing. In the end, you just do what you need to do. You find the cheat – even when it hurts.

The tunnel ends and he falls forward into the heart of the Enterprise. He can see the bright crackling of energy, the gleaming metal – the long climb to get there. He falls forward, and never hits the ground.

* * *

Leonard wakes up and Jim is sleeping on folded arms, head pressed against Leonard’s ribs. He’s in a small gray room – no windows. Jim is golden and shining and Leonard touches his hair, feels the warmth. He can’t even hope.

There is a shuffle in the corner and he turns his head. A darkly cloaked figure separates from the shadows and it all comes back.

“You.”

They had beamed down to Korsua. The Korsuans had wanted to join the Federation in return for sharing their dilithium mines. It was an important deal – Jim had been stressed and jittery. Leonard hadn’t wanted to beam down but he had. Moral support, he had grumbled.

And then it had all gone wrong.

The alien’s third eye blinks serenely at him. Minister K’Lora. Leonard remembers his three dark eyes singling him out in the crowd only minutes after arrival. “We merely wanted to impart a lesson.”

Leonard soothes his hand over Jim’s head. “Is it over?” he asks, weary.

Minister K’Lora inclines his head. “Your captain was quite angry. But once a lesson begins, it is impossible to stop. We allowed him to go in and… assist.”

Leonard remembers Jim dying in the lobby, speaking through the blood about doors. “There was a cheat.”

The minister smiles, showing his three sharp teeth. “There’s always a cheat.”

“But that wasn’t the lesson.”

“The lesson was that sometimes, you cannot win. It seems, Leonard McCoy, that is something you will not learn.”

Leonard presses his hand to Jim’s head. “That’s not a lesson I believe in,” he says at last. He thinks of Jim dying over and over. “That’s not a lesson I want to learn.”

The minister shrugs. “He will die some day, Leonard McCoy. We have seen. You must accept that one day, he will die. We wish to make sure you are prepared. We have seen the fear in your soul.”

“I’ll learn it then.” Leonard shifts. “How long?”

“You were in the cycle for eight hours.” The minister hesitates. “The memories will fade. It will seem like a… nightmare. Only half remembered.” He steps toward the door. “I will leave you alone. Your captain will wake up soon.”

Jim blinks his eyes open seconds later. He wakes up and smiles.

Leonard thinks of crawling into warp cores and sorting through med kits. He thinks this is worth it.


End file.
